paper on cortical functionality emergence

[Hans-Otto Carmesin]

Dear Connectionists!

The following paper is now available via WWW
http://schoner.physik.uni-bremen.de/~carmesin/docs/Gordon.ps; 
also few hardcopies are available.

--- Title: 
Cortical Functionality Emergence: General Theory & Quantitative Results 

--- by Dr. Hans-Otto Carmesin
Institute for Theoretical Physics and Center for Cognition Sciences
University Bremen, 28334 Bremen, Germany
Fax: 0049 421 218 4869,
E-mail: Carmesin at theo.physik.uni-bremen-de
WWW: http://schoner.physik.uni-bremen.de/~carmesin/

--- Appeared in:
Frank Schweitzer (Ed.):  Self-Organization of Complex 
Structures: From Individual to Collective Dynamics, vol. I, chapt. 
18, 215-233, London: Gordon and Breach, 1996.

--- Abstract:
The human genotype represents at most ten billion binary informations,
whereas the human brain contains more than a million times a billion
synapses. So a differentiated brain structure is essentially due to
self-organization. Such self-organization is relevant for areas
ranging from medicine to the design of intelligent complex
systems. Many brain structures emerge as collective phenomenon of a
microscopic neurosynaptic dynamics: a stochastic dynamics mimics the
neuronal action potentials, while the synaptic dynamics is modeled by
a local coupling dynamics of type Hebb-rule, that is, a synaptic
efficiency increases after coincident spiking of pre- and postsynaptic
neuron. The microscopic dynamics is transformed to a collective
dynamics reminiscent of hydrodynamics. The theory models empirical
findings quantitatively: 
Topology preserving neuronal maps were assumed by Descartes in 1664;
their self-organization was suggested by Weiss in 1928; their
empirical observation was reported by Marshall in 1941; it is shown
that they are neurosynaptically stable due to ubiquitous infinitesimal
short range electrical or chemical leakage. In the visual cortex,
neuronal stimulus orientation preference emerges; empirically measured
orientation patterns are determined by the Poisson equation of
electrostatics; this Poisson equation orientation pattern emergence is
derived here. Complex cognitive abilities emerge when the basic 
local synaptic changes are regulated by  
valuation, emergent valuation, attention, attention focus or
combination of subnetworks. 
Altogether a general theory is presented for the emergence of
functionality from synaptic growth in neurobiological systems. The
theory provides a transformation to a collective dynamics and is 
used for quantitative modeling of empirical data.